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Feb 26, 2014

Jimdo Review: Best eCommerce Oriented Website Builder

Jimdo.com is great a website builder that can provide you with
everything you need in order to set-up the website you want for your
business with very little effort. Even though this is platform more
eCommerce oriented, that doesn’t mean you can’t build a complex website
or even start your own blog.

Started in 2007 by 3 guys in northern
Germany, Jimdo has grown to power over 8 million websites, offering
support in 12 languages with team members from over 15 countries.

Summary – Overall review

The good things about Jimdo:Jimdo is free
– Even with their free plan there are enough features so that you build
a fully functional website. There are no time restraints and no credit
card info needed to sign up and start using their platform.Mobile
– With their mobile editor you can fully customize the look of your
website so it looks as good as possible on mobile devices. The ability
to further customize the mobile version with the access to the CSS code,
Jimdo scores some big points with the users.eCommerce
– I think Jimdo offers the most complete array of features for building
an online shop, even for the free plan. They offer features for
everything you need to run a successful online store, like automatic
email responses to customers, inventory tracking, discount codes for
your products or even cross-selling certain products.Dropbox
– Jimdo offers the possibility to integrate your Dropbox account with
your website so this way you can minimize the space your are using. This
is especially useful if you have a lot of pictures to showcase.

The Cons:Footer Ad
– On the Free plan you are forced an ad with the Jimdo logo on the
footer. This is almost a requirement for most of the website builders
but is still pretty annoying.Limited Themes
– Even though Jimdo offers some features to allow you to customize the
background image other things like that, the quality of the themes is
average and mostly inferior to other similar service providers.

Overall Conclusion:
If
you have a small business or wish to make an online store, then Jimdo
is the perfect solution for you. They offer all the features to satisfy
your eCommerce necessities and
that saves you from the need to contact third party shopping carts.

They
offer all the features to satisfy your eCommerce necessities and saves
you from the need to contact third party shopping carts.

The support is well structured with a large knowledgebase and forums available in 12 languages.

Award:- Best for online stores 2013 WBTUTORIAL REWARD

Pricing

You
can use Jimdo for free for as much as you want, but if you want to
unlock all the features, bring more power to your website or you are
interested in getting your business to the next level, then you might
want to think about upgrading.

They have 2 paid membership plans that offer great features at reasonable prices:

1) JimdoPro
– This package is best for small businesses or freelancers that want to
show visitors their products, skills or portfolio. You will have your
own domain, ability to customize the website as much as you can and
simply start building your own brand.

2) JimdoBusiness
– Beside receiving everything that is included with the JimdoPro
package, you get access to all the features that Jimdo has to offer. You
can have a medium sized business running at its best without the help
of third parties.

Another important thing is the fact that you will get priority support from their team, usually within 2 hours.

Interface

Jimdo
is very user friendly, even if is not a true Drag & Drop website
builder. It is more like an add, select and edit platform, but
everything you build in front of you reflects on your website.

With
Jimdo you don’t have to push any Save or Publish buttons, so you don’t
really have to undo things. Just keep working on it until you are
satisfied with the outcome and leave it like that.

Design / Themes

To
be honest, this is where Jimdo lets me down because the quality of
their templates are not that good, and they are certainly not as good as
other providers like Weebly or Wix. But, with that being said, there is
bright side.

They allow you to access the HTML/CSS code so you
can work your magic (if you have this knowledge) and make your theme
exactly how you want it to be. This also means that there are third
parties that can provide custom made templates, which can be a great
option if you are interested in developing your own brand.

Overall, there are enough themes and customization options for you to build a pretty website.

Customer support

Customer
support doesn’t seem to be their strong point because the free plan
doesn’t allow you to any kind of contact with them. I understand that
free members don’t really bring in revenue, but if other website
builders can do it, then maybe they need to start doing it too.

The
support emails are prioritized, so their support team handles
JimdoBusiness inquiries first and than the JimdoPro questions are
answered. Not really feeling it but I can understand from the business
point of view.

The major issue for me is the fact that they don’t
provide phone support for any of their members, not even the paying ones
(at least i never found this option to be available anywhere on the
site).

Even with this small issues, Jimdo does provide a very well
structured knowledgebase and pretty much everything I tried to find
out, the right answer was provided.

Bonuses and promotion

At
the moment they haven’t issued any new JimdoPro or JimdoBusiness coupon
codes, but when they do, we will be sure to add it in this section.

Step by Step Tutorial To Create Your First Jimdo Website

Like
always, the first step is to register a new account. And with Jimdo,
the signup process is so simple that it only takes a few seconds
because, like you can see in the image below, you only need to complete 3
fields :

After
you choose your desired name for your site (which will become part of
your URL), enter your email address and enter a password, then just
check the Terms of Use button and you’re done.*Don’t forget to check your email in order to activate your account !

Now
your are in what called your Dashboard, which is where you will see
everything you will build, edit or remove because the Jimdo platform is a
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) builder.

On your right
side you have the control panel where all the important settings are at.
I will take each function, one by one, and discuss everything it does
and everything you need to know to make the most out of your website.

The first one is “Layout”
where you can choose your website’s layout and theme. You can choose
from a selection of templates that you can find under Free and Special
because JimdoPro and JimdoBusiness templates are only available for the
premium paying members.

There is also the “custom” tab where you design
your own theme if you have strong knowledge of HTML and CSS.

The last tab called “Settings”
gives you the ability to change three small things, including: the
alignment of your text, the spacing for the work area of your website
and the color for your website border.

Style is
where you can choose and customize the way that your text looks, what
font you want to use, the heading style and so on. The “blog styles”
settings apply only if you choose to incorporate a blog to your website.

Upgrade
– here you can see an overview of all the features of the 2 premium
plans that Jimdo offers: Business and Pro. You can take a look around
and see why you might consider to upgrade your membership plan by taking
a look at some of the sites that are using a paid plan.

Settings
– in this section you will be able to enter in your full details,
website details, eCommerce settings, managing your apps or email
accounts. I will talk a little about each category and only describe the
most important features that you need in order to get the best from
your website.

Website
– You can edit your site title or footer in order in add more
information related to your business. A nice feature is the
“Passord-Protected Areas” where you can name and lock certain parts or
posts in your website, so only a selected group of people can have
accessto them.

“Edit Head” is where you can add custom codes to your website, like your Google Analytics or anything related.

Mobile
– Jimdo offers a mobile version of your website for free and you can
customize its appearance by selecting a template from “Mobile View”.

Email and Domain Management
– These three features are available only for paid members. In case you
opt in for a paid plan, this is where you can setup your email accounts
and forward them to another account. You can also order and manage your
custom domains.

Store
– This is where you can setup all your eCommerce settings. Jimdo offers
a very good support for online stores and by far the most complete free
eCommerce solution from all the website builders we have reviewed until
now.

Apps
– You can connect your Jimdo website to your Dropbox account, Google
Analytics or Twitter account. You can also generate QR Codes with just a
few clicks.

SEO – It’s important to
check this feature and enter the details for your page, like: the page
title, description, and keywords. Without taking care of these fields
you will find it harder to rank in search engines.

Statistics – A great feature, but unfortunately is available only to the paid members. Too bad if you ask me.

Help
– Don’t overlook this tab because you can get quick answers to most of
your Jimdo related questions. A very informative and organized
knowledgebase.

Creating/Design Your Homepage

The
first thing you will do edit is your header. For this you will click
anywhere on the surface of the header and a drop-down menu will show up,
like the one below:

Custom Photo
– here you can select an image from your computer (or Dropbox account)
and add it as a header. You can also adjust the size and crop it so it
will fit exactly how you would like.

Pattern
– another option in case you don’t really want a photo as your header,
but you do want something more minimalist, like an abstract pattern.

Adjust Header – different settings to adjust the position of your header image

Title – beside being able to edit your title, Jimdo offers the possibility to use different fonts, sizes and positions of your title.

Logo – good feature to add a bit more branding to your website, but unfortunately this is only available to the premium members.

After playing a little with all the settings, here is what my chosen header looks like:

When
it comes to the first part of building your page, everything is done
very easily. You can simply add your desired elements, add the content
you wanted and that’s it! You can arrange them how you want by simply
dragging them left or right, up or down, until you are satisfied with
the looks of it.

When you want to add a new element you just have to click the “+”.

After
that, a small menu will pop up showing you what kind of elements you
can add to your page. An example is shown on the left side:

For my
test I have used the “Text with Photo” elements, then the “Spacing” to
separate the page a little from my next set of elements. After that I
use “Columns” button to split it in 2 columns where I have inserted a
Youtube video and Google Maps for the second column.
For the left
sidebar I chose to add a few big social media icons.

So, after just a few minutes, this is the result:

If you want to see what you can achieve in a matter of minutes, just take a look at this Sample Site i have done for this tutorial.* If you want to listen the short version of this review, be sure to check our Jimdo podcast here.